The substantial effect of air pollution on cardiovascular disease and mortality burdens is well-established. Emissions-reducing interventions on coal-fired power plants -- a major source of hazardous air pollution -- have proven to be an effective, but costly, strategy for reducing pollution-related health burdens. Targeting the power plants that achieve maximum health benefits while satisfying realistic cost constraints is challenging. The primary difficulty lies in quantifying the health benefits of intervening at particular plants. This is further complicated because interventions are applied on power plants, while health impacts occur in potentially distant communities, a setting known as bipartite network interference (BNI). In this paper, we introduce novel policy learning methods based on Q- and A-Learning to determine the optimal policy under arbitrary BNI. We derive asymptotic properties and demonstrate finite sample efficacy in simulations. We apply our novel methods to a comprehensive dataset of Medicare claims, power plant data, and pollution transport networks. Our goal is to determine the optimal strategy for installing power plant scrubbers to minimize ischemic heart disease (IHD) hospitalizations under various cost constraints. We find that annual IHD hospitalization rates could be reduced in a range from 20.66-44.51 per 10,000 person-years through optimal policies under different cost constraints.

Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart Inc. and a leading membership warehouse club, announced the national, chain-wide roll out of Inventory Scan that will be added to their existing fleet of robotic scrubbers in partnership with Brain Corp and Tennant Company. The rollout marks the largest and fastest technology deployment undertaken by Brain Corp, an artificial intelligence (AI) company creating transformative core technology in robotics, and the first commercial application of its inventory scanning technology anywhere in the world.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. and SAN DIEGO, Ca.--Sam's Club has completed a roll out of inventory scanning towers that have been added to its existing fleet of floor scrubbing robots. The club store had started adding the inventory towers to its robots in January, and now all locations have the technology added. "Our initial goal at Sam's Club was to convert time historically spent on scrubbers to more member-focused activities. Our autonomous scrubbers have exceeded this goal. In addition to increasing the consistency and frequency of floor cleaning, intelligent scrubbers have empowered associates with critical insights," said Todd Garner, vice president, in-club product management.

New York (CNN Business)Soon every Sam's Club will have a robot to scrub the store floors. In partnership with Brain Corp, an artificial intelligence company, the membership-only warehouse chain will distribute 372 new autonomous floor scrubbers to its stores this fall. Sam's Club, which is owned by Walmart, has already deployed hundreds of the robotic scrubbers. With the addition of 372 new robots, the company will soon have a scrubber in each location. It will also implement one of Brain Corp's accessories that will allow them to analyze shelf inventory.